"Golden Arrow"

Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington offer up the first 11 minutes of their new album as Darkside atop a video of a fire burning in slow motion, but Jaar and Harrington seem to care more about the smoke than the fire. The first half of this composition (which you can download via Jaar's label Other People) is ink-black, soaking in a sparse violin and echoing piano. It takes nearly six minutes for the duo to work themselves into the sort of slinky, neurotic groove that Jaar featured on Space Is Only Noise, now aided by Harrington's sharp, staccato fretwork. When Jaar's voice comes in, it's not the conversational basso he preferred on that album, but rather an affected, digital bleat that recalls Mark Hollis in its abstraction, if not its garbled tone. Darkside seem to be aiming for the same kind of well groomed, shifting post-rock laid down by bands like Hollis' Talk Talk and Bark Psychosis. It's a kind of weaponized patience that makes Jaar's brainy grooves seem big and potent.